Well, this is an action-packed weekend for my Mission. I have platonic meetings set for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. The first is done, and it's worth a few words.
This was the sixth meeting overall, and the first time I met up with the same person for a 2nd time. I went bowling with the first girl I met online, from craig's list's strictly platonic w4m section.
I was never really anxious about meeting her, even the first time (when we talked for 2 1/2 hours), possibly because she thought I would be shy offline even when we were e-mailing. Or maybe platonic meetings don't make me nervous in general? Hmmm, I guess we will see this weekend.
So anyway, this one lasted about 2 hours. It turns out there isn't a whole lot of time for two people to talk while bowling...a few comments after each frame, mostly things related to the game. I can safely say I had no anxiety at all this time, and guess what? There was little inhibition to speak of. After bowling, we talked for a bit and I had no trouble whatsoever thinking of things to say. I even debated the Larry Craig scandal with her, in my normal humorous fashion. I was pretty much myself.
Awesome....that's quite substantial progress for the Mission. I managed to get to the point of actually being myself around someone after seeing them only a single time. Sounds like I have my second offline friend. Exciting stuff, so why not more enthusiasm in this blog entry?
Slight complication.....I'm concerned this girl may have something in mind other than friendship. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the first time I talked to her she said something about another guy she'd met from her craig's list ad, and not being interested in him. What the heck? Her post was listed under "Strictly Platonic." I started to get a little concerned this time when she let me pay for everything without offering. And when we left, she said something like "thanks for a good time." That sounds like the stuff of dating...certainly not what I was going for.
The moral of the story is to beware of people posting under "Strictly Platonic" on craig's list. It would be great to have this girl as a friend, but I will have to figure out a way to make it clear that we are thoroughly in the Friends Zone.
Don't get me wrong, though. I'm happy and amazed to even have such a problem... :)
This was the sixth meeting overall, and the first time I met up with the same person for a 2nd time. I went bowling with the first girl I met online, from craig's list's strictly platonic w4m section.
I was never really anxious about meeting her, even the first time (when we talked for 2 1/2 hours), possibly because she thought I would be shy offline even when we were e-mailing. Or maybe platonic meetings don't make me nervous in general? Hmmm, I guess we will see this weekend.
So anyway, this one lasted about 2 hours. It turns out there isn't a whole lot of time for two people to talk while bowling...a few comments after each frame, mostly things related to the game. I can safely say I had no anxiety at all this time, and guess what? There was little inhibition to speak of. After bowling, we talked for a bit and I had no trouble whatsoever thinking of things to say. I even debated the Larry Craig scandal with her, in my normal humorous fashion. I was pretty much myself.
Awesome....that's quite substantial progress for the Mission. I managed to get to the point of actually being myself around someone after seeing them only a single time. Sounds like I have my second offline friend. Exciting stuff, so why not more enthusiasm in this blog entry?
Slight complication.....I'm concerned this girl may have something in mind other than friendship. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the first time I talked to her she said something about another guy she'd met from her craig's list ad, and not being interested in him. What the heck? Her post was listed under "Strictly Platonic." I started to get a little concerned this time when she let me pay for everything without offering. And when we left, she said something like "thanks for a good time." That sounds like the stuff of dating...certainly not what I was going for.
The moral of the story is to beware of people posting under "Strictly Platonic" on craig's list. It would be great to have this girl as a friend, but I will have to figure out a way to make it clear that we are thoroughly in the Friends Zone.
Don't get me wrong, though. I'm happy and amazed to even have such a problem... :)
4 comments:
Hey! I came across your blog (creepy I know, haha) and was super impressed by your willingness to completely go out on a limb and try everything you can! I've been super shy all my life as well, and have totally gotten the "why don't you talk much" line, so I understand, and it’s nice to read about someone you can relate to. So don't be discouraged, cause what your doing is bound to reap many benefits in the end! Good Luck!
Hey, thanks a lot for the encouragement. This is my main focus in life now. It's what I think about when I wake up in the morning, and when I go to bed at night. I am determined to do what once seemed impossible.
It's not a bad blog, but there's nothing there to help the readers (which was something you promised at the beginning). It sounds like at the beginning you didn't talk much and then in later dates/meet ups you were talking a bit more. Obviously you learnt something along the way, what exactly was that?
Does that make sense? Another thing I'd love to read is what/how they're communicating. Not word for word but break the conversation down and use it for a how-to. Would be helpful for yourself as well.
Hey Jason,
Ok, good...help me help you!
Most of the posts have plenty that should help the readers. I try to do two things: (1) recap how my meetings went, so that others who want to try these things have an idea of what it's like; and (2) document any principles that I plan and put into practice.
For example, I went into detail about two plans that I had to alleviate the inhibition problem - one that worked, and one that didn't.
I've talked about how going into the first 4 or 5 meetings, I had made a list of conversation topics tailored to the other person. I described how things went when I did and didn't use that list technique. And when I just had a few things in mind rather than writing something out...etc.
So hopefully all the things like that can help you. Of course, I'm still in the very early stages of this, so a lot of the stuff I write isn't necessary part of a solution. You get to see what does and doesn't work as I go along...at some points along the way I will try to summarize this stuff though, because I know you have to sort through my ramblings to find it :)
With one exception, I haven't really been talking more in the later meetups. The only real concrete things I've learned are what I talked about in the post called "Inhibition." I've generally been getting more comfortable though, and I think that's just from getting used to doing these things, not from any trick or anything I've come up with. That was really the plan all along...reading about social skills can only help so much: it's much more important to do these things for practice. Which explains why people normally get this stuff down in elementary school, without needing to read about it.
As usual, I've digressed!! So it sounds like the issue is that I haven't talked much about the (very) basic success I've had in conversation, since I was already able to do that stuff starting out. I realize others may not be to that point already, so I will try to touch on it again in this ridiculously long comment.
So in all but the last case, the girl did the vast, vast, vast majority of the talking. Basically, all I did was (1) have things in mind from my conversation topics list and (2) use active listening. I used these two things to come up with questions to ask. I could, for example, start out asking "So you've been to Europe?" (it's in their online profile) and then they will yap yap yap for a couple minutes. In her yapping she'll mention something about the food, or hotel, or something, and then I will use that to ask another question when she takes a breath. "Do they have any different flavors of soda in their grocery stores?" Then the cycle repeats! And the conversation will naturally transition to other topics. If there's no natural transition, there's a brief pause, and I'll pull out something else from my list or hopefully, just something else that comes to mind. Of course, they occasionally ask questions too, and I..um..answer them :) And use that to come up with another question, like this:
Girl: "So do you have a big family?"
Me: "2 brothers and 3 sisters. How do you get along with your siblings?"
Girl: Yap yap yap
(note: it's best to ask open-ended questions)
It will be interesting to see how that works if I ever meet someone who isn't extremely talkative :) But that's exactly how it went the first 6 times.
When I get the inhibition issue solved, I should be able to say a lot more.
Ok Jason, does that help? I'll probably make a real, hopefully clearer post out of this for you. Let me know anytime you have questions, I'm more than happy to answer the best I can :-)
Post a Comment